


Stress Test

by TheBasilRathbone



Series: Pacemaker [4]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Alec and Ellie Are Already Together, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Happy Ending, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBasilRathbone/pseuds/TheBasilRathbone
Summary: The arrests of the murderers of Pippa Gillespie and Lisa Newbury were supposed to be the end of a years-long struggle, the closure that Hardy had needed to desperately find peace. He could finally move on, and move on with Ellie, who had helped solve it.But time has passed and the trial comes around, Tess's infidelity, Hardy's cover-up, and the true story of the stolen pendant come out on the stand, and now his daughter won't answer his calls. The fragile happiness he'd finally managed to build up doesn't look so certain anymore.
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Daisy Hardy, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller, Daisy Hardy & Ellie Miller
Series: Pacemaker [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652722
Comments: 7
Kudos: 158





	Stress Test

When Daisy lets herself into the cottage, it’s already dark out. She hasn’t texted or called ahead, knowing that she’d get a lecture over the phone rather than just a place to crash for the night.

She hasn’t spoken to her dad in weeks.

Early in their relationship, her dad had dragged Ellie into the Sandbrook cold case, and they’d spent a lot of their time together working it. It turned out their instant chemistry extended to their professional life, too, and the pair of them worked as well as partners as they did as a couple.

Her dad had solved the case, and the peace it had brought him was noticeable. Though he insisted he didn’t give a shit about public perception, the praise he got in the press after being dubbed ‘worst cop in Britain’ was also a boost.

But that was ages ago. The long wait to the trial was over, the guilty parties were locked away safely, and her dad had even received a card in the mail from Cate Gillespie. It wasn’t a thank you card, exactly, but it was a peace offering all the same.

The trouble had come in a cross-examination, where it had been revealed that the necklace had been stolen not from her father’s car but her mother’s. The defence had cried conspiracy, trying to point to dishonesty and cover-up on the police’s part, and Alec Hardy had been called and forced to admit under oath that the lie had only been to conceal his wife’s affair and to save his daughter from this very knowledge.

It obviously hadn’t hurt their case, as the prosecution came out victorious, but it had certainly thrown a bomb into Daisy’s life.

Her strained relationship with her mother had imploded, and she hadn’t spoken to her father since. He had left call after call on her phone as the weeks went on, and she’d let it go straight to voicemail. It was just like how it had been before, right after the divorce, when he never came round and she refused to take his calls.

The voicemails were similar and soppy. That he loved her, that he missed her. Asking her if she wanted to grab lunch, or dinner. He’d left one just last night. Quiet, and resigned. _Daisy, please. Please call me. Or let me come round to see you. So I don’t forget what you look like. I know yer angry, but I love you so much, Darlin’._

So Daisy was thankful that his house was quiet when she snuck in. If he was asleep, she could at least avoid a Serious Discussion until the morning. Daisy left her shoes out in plain sight and slung her jacket over one of the wobbly kitchen chairs instead of the closet so her dad would know she was here when he got up tomorrow, and was about to head down the hall to her bedroom when she caught sight of a socked foot extended past the arm of the couch.

Her dad slept on the sofa as much as a mattress when he was working a case, it wasn’t new, but when Daisy creeps around the other side of the couch to check on him, she realizes that she really, really needs to start calling ahead now that her dad has gotten himself a girlfriend.

She isn’t met with a horrifying sight, but she just as easily could have been. Case files are strewn over the coffee table along with takeaway containers and half-empty mugs of coffee. Ellie and her dad are fast asleep on the sofa, fully clothed, thank Christ, evidently having crashed while going over evidence. Her dad is stretched out on his back, Ellie wedged between his side and the back of the sofa, their legs tangled together. Her head rests on his shoulder, drooling slightly, and his shirt is partially unbuttoned, just enough for Ellie to have snaked her hand in to lie against his bare skin, her palm resting over his heart surgery scar.

She should be disgusted, she knows. She’s a teenager, she should be grossed out at any displays of affection her parents showed. But she had seen her dad alone for so long, she can’t help but be warmed that there’s someone around to take care of him.

A few men had come in and out of her mum’s life over the past few years, but her dad has always stayed single, or at least, as far as she knew. She suspects strongly that there hadn’t been anyone else, given the uncertainty he showed when she tried to set him up on a dating app.

Everything had always just seemed so difficult for her dad, she was so used to seeing him look defeated all the time, that Ellie coming along had almost been suspicious. Too good to be true. She was easy with her affection, easy with her bickering too, in a way that made them seem as though they’d been together for much longer than they had. She remembered her parents together, how her dad would hesitate and then give her mum a terse peck on the cheek, as if he had to do a risk-analysis of whether or not he’d be rejected every time he went to kiss her.

It’s not like that with Ellie. They’re never gross or overly gushy in front of her, but he’ll pluck a piece of toast right out of her hands and take a bite out of it at breakfast, she’ll grab onto his arm as she laughs as though to stop herself from falling right over, or when she goes to look at something he wants her show her in the newspaper, she’ll stand behind him and casually run her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck as she reads.

It’s as though she’s taught Daisy’s dad how to be loved, again. Cheesy as that sounds.

Ellie is always warm and confident with Daisy, and her dad has started to follow suit. They’d barely touched before, but now he’ll hug her briefly in greeting when she comes by to visit, or pat her on the shoulder when he passes by her chair, or wrap his arm around the back of her neck and pull her in by the crook of his elbow to kiss her temple when she’s done something to make him proud. He’s never going to the overly affectionate type, but she’d find that weird if he was. She likes things how they are. How they’ve become, rather.

So when she sees them curled up on the sofa together, her dad’s arm slung around Ellie’s waist, she only feels happy for him (with maybe only a little bit of disgust lingering from the fear that she’d step into the living room to find them naked).

Daisy sneaks back towards her bedroom, decorated immediately after the divorce for a twelve-year-old girl and never updated. She’d never been around long enough to do so.

When she wakes up the next morning and steps out of her room, the house is still silent. Her dad’s bedroom door is still open and empty. It’s only when she hears the sound of two people pulling away from a kiss that she freezes.

“Mornin’” her dad says softly from the living room, and Daisy can hear the sound of shifting bodies.

“Mm. Morning. Don’t you dare kiss me, my breath must be vile.”

“Don’ care.” Another kissing sound, and Daisy’s teenage sense of ‘grossed-out’ is starting to kick in. “Fuckin’ hell, my back is killin’ me.”

Ellie snorts. “That’s what you get when you sleep on the sofa at your age.”

“Yer my age.”

“Oi, fuck off. I’m four whole years younger, and don’t you forget it.” More shifting. “C’mon, old man. If you make me breakfast, I’ll rub your back for you.”

Yuck. Daisy creeps back down the hall and then pointedly closes her bedroom door. Loudly.

Silence, then, “Dais?”

“Morning,” she calls, waiting a second before emerging down the hallway again, rubbing her eyes as though she’s just woken up. “I know I didn’t call first, but you were asleep when I got in anyways.”

Ellie blushes and her dad looks sheepish at the thought of being caught on the sofa together.

“S’fine, Darlin’. I’m...happy to see you.” Why exactly they hadn’t been speaking hung heavy in the air. Sensing the tension in the room, Ellie clears her throat and rises, her blouse horribly wrinkled from sleeping in it.

“I’ll pop in the shower first, shall I? Good to see you, Daisy.”

They wait until Ellie disappears down the hall before meeting each other’s gaze.

“I’m glad you came, Dais. Really. I’m so happy to see you.”

“Okay,” she replies.

He pauses. “Yer mum know yer here?”

“She knows I’m not at home,” Daisy says tersely, rolling her eyes. She knows he hates it when she rolls her eyes at him, and she does it just to piss him off. “We had the row of the century last night, so I came here.”

He nods. “Yer always welcome, Dais. Always. Yer mum said...she said things hadn’t been goin’ so well between you, since the trial.”

“You mean since finding out my mum’s a slag and my dad’s a liar? Yeah, not really.”

“Daisy!” he sputters, shocked by her language. She only rolls her eyes again.

“It’s true, isn’t it? She had sex with some bloke from work and you covered it up. That’s what the papers said.”

He sighs. “Daisy...Yer mum and I...we weren’t happy by the end. Things were difficult. The circumstances-”

“Don’t defend her!”

“I’m not,” he says quickly. “‘M not defendin’ her. She shouldn’ o’ done what she done. I know it, she knows it. But what happened happened, and we had to deal with it. And because we’re yer parents and we love you, we dealt with it by tryin’ to protect you.”

“This wasn’t about me,” she cries. “I’m pissed at her for cheating but I’m more pissed at her for letting you take the blame. She ruined your marriage and then ruined your career and didn’t bat an eye.”

“Dais,” he groans. “It wasn’ like tha’. She never asked me to-“

“She didn’t stop you, either, did she? She didn’t put up a fight.”

“Bein’ a woman in this profession, Dais…her career would’ve been ruined.”

“Wouldn’t even have been an issue to start with if she hadn’t been fucking her co-worker, though, would it?”

Her dad pinches the bridge of his nose, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter. “We were tryin’ to protect you, Daisy.”

“You know that’s bullshit, dad.” She holds up a finger when he tried to protest, hating how very much like her mother she feels in that moment. “No, it is. You know it is. If she was thinking about me, she wouldn’t’ve fucked her co-worker. If she was thinking about me, she wouldn’t have made things difficult when you wanted to get back together. She agreed to let you take the blame because it let her off the hook. She was probably glad for it. It was never about me and you know that, deep down. She was thinking about her. She always thinks about her. That’s the end of it.”

She’d normally never be allowed to curse so much in front of her parents, but her dad can clearly sense her anger, and doesn’t comment. It gives her a heady sense of power, being able to convey the strength of her emotions without her parents chastising her for it.

Her dad sighs, scratching at his beard and avoiding her gaze. She realizes, in that moment, that it was probably easier for him to think that his wife had only been thinking about Daisy instead of thinking she had intentionally taken advantage of him once again.

“Yer mum loves you, you know."

“But that’s not what we’re talking about right now, is it?”

He sighs again before going for the kettle, looking rather desperate for caffeine. “Dais, I don’ really know what we’re talkin’ about any more.”

To be fair, neither does she. She had been furious with him when she’d found out, but she can’t exactly remember why. Furious for being lied to, perhaps, though it was difficult to stay angry when everything he’d done he’d done for her. In some strange way, she misses being younger, when she could just be selfishly angry at him for being absent so much of the time without it being watered down with sympathy and compassion for what a difficult few years he’d had.

“She took advantage of you,” Daisy says at last. “Stop trying to cover for her, you’re still doing it. She did a horrible thing and then she made you suffer more for it so that her life could be easier.”

“Maybe,” her dad replies at last. “But I don’ really care all tha’ much about her intentions. I care about mine. _I_ wanted to protect you. Protect you both. An’ I’m sorry it all came out now, Dais. I’m sorry if yer embarrassed, having to…deal with it all, and at school…”

“No wonder you didn’t want to be around her.”

Her dad deflates. “Killed me that I wasn’ around for you, Dais. I missed you every day. But me an’ yer mother…all we did was argue. And tha’ wasn’ all her fault, don’ be thinkin’ that. You were too young to stay alone if I got called away on a case at night, so you couldn’ stay at my place, but bein’ around yer parents screamin’ at each other all the time…you shouldn’t’ve had to grow up with tha’. So I…stayed away.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, not quite willing to give up her anger.

“‘M sorry I wasn’ around, Sweetheart. I am. I know I haven’….I know I haven’ been a good dad to you these past few years, but I’m tryin’. I’m jus’ tryin’ as best I can. I’ve failed you, Daisy. I have. ‘M so sorry.”

“I know,” she says at last, still sulking a bit. “And you haven’t been a bad dad. You haven’t failed me.”

He meets her gaze, then, with a soft expression. The shower in the other room switches off, and they both glance down the hall.

“She treat you well?”

He raises a brow. “Wha’?”

“Ellie. She treat you well?”

He snorts. “Who’s the parent here, Lass?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she says, holding her ground. “Does she treat you well? And I think you owe me some honesty, after this.”

He clears his throat, growing uncomfortable. “Yeah, Dais. She’s…good.”

“Good?”

He sighs. “Good, yes. She…she’s good to me, Dais. Better’n I deserve, probably. She’s a right pain in the arse more often ’n not, but. Is what it is.”

“And she takes care of you?”

“Daisy,” he groans, evidently embarrassed, but at her hard expression he consents. “Yes, alright? She…A lot o’ stuff got…dredged back up when I was back on the Sandbrook case. Stuff I wanted to forget. Had a rough go of it, for a while, an’ she was…there when I needed ‘er. Don’ know how I would’ve gotten through it, without ‘er. Wouldn’t’ve been able to solve it without ‘er, that’s for sure. She's better at that sort o' thing, Ellie. Don't tell 'er I told you tha', though." 

His eyes grow distant, as if he’s remembering some tender moment between them, and Daisy feels herself softening. “You happy, Dad?”

It brings him back to her, and he gives her a bit of a guilty smile. “Yeah, Dais. ‘M happy. El makes me happier than I’ve been in a long while. But I wasn’…desperately miserable before ‘er. She isn’ the only thing in my life that gives me happiness. You….” He looks awkwardly down at his feet. “Yer the single best thing in my life, Dais. Losing Ellie’d be hard on me, yeah? But losin’ you…I couldn’ bear it.”

“You’re not gonna lose me, Dad.” She steps forward, then, wrapping her arms around his middle and burying her face against his shoulder. After a brief moment of surprise, his arms come around her, too, and he rests his chin on the top of her head.

Her heart breaks a bit for him. His wife had cheated on him and he’d sacrificed his career for her, sacrificed time with his daughter to shield her from their fighting, and seemed to have given up on any source of real happiness and comfort before Ellie came along. She suspects, very strongly, that it would be a lot more than 'hard on him' if Ellie were to leave. The still-childish part of her found it hard to give up on the idea that her family might someday get back together and be happy, that it wasn’t going to work out between her mum and dad, but like she’d repeatedly told her father, it wasn’t about her. Maybe, after all of these years of loneliness and sadness, maybe Ellie was his reward for all of it. Some sort of apology gift from the universe for having such a shit deal for so long. She’d never tell him that, though, he’d think she’d gone mad.

“You like ‘er?”

Daisy pulls away to look at him, awkwardly shuffling backwards as they navigate a new, more affectionate territory. “What, Ellie?”

Her dad nods. “Yeah, Ellie. Do you…do _you_ like ‘er?”

She finally allows herself a small smile. “Yeah, Dad. I like her. I like her a lot.”

It looks like a weight’s been lifted off his shoulders. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s…it’s easier when she’s around. And it’s nice to have someone to talk to, sometimes. Someone that’s not you or Mum. I mean, she’s still kind of a mum, but not…my mum. You know?”

He nods again, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. “‘M glad. I…I’m hopin’ she sticks around for a while, so I’m…glad tha’ you like ‘er.”

“As long as she can put up with you when you’re being an arse and you don’t chase her away?”

“Steady on, Dais!”

Ellie appears in the doorway, wearing the same trousers from the night before but one of her dad’s shirt’s. She has a towel in her hands and is still squeezing water from her hair. “Everything alright, out here?”

“No bloodshed. Safe to come out,” he replies, pouring three mugs of tea and unthinkingly adding an ungodly amount of sugar to one before handing it over to Ellie. They stare at one another for a long moment, mooney-eyed.

“Just kiss and get it over with, honestly. It’s worse when you just drool over each other.”

Her dad scowls at her, though it’s without any real venom, but Ellie laughs and grabs his jaw in her free hand, pulling him down for a chaste kiss.

“The cheek on tha’ girl,” he growls against her lips, and Ellie raps her knuckles against his chest.

“You’d think she’d have a smart-arse father, or something,” Ellie replies, turning to wink at Daisy. “Now go have a shower and change. Then you can come back and make us breakfast."

“‘M not makin’ anythin’ fried,” he warns, and Ellie makes a face.

“Didn’t say fried. You have plenty in the fridge. I bought fruit and everything.”

“‘Fruit’ implies variety. You bought _grapes_.”

“I was just hoping you’d choke on the seeds.”

“They’re seedless.”

“Smart-arse. Now go away, or Daisy and I will start with the girl-talk.”

“Girl-talk?”

“Chattin’ about cute blokes.”

Her dad makes a face and grumbles, starting down the hall.

“Did you see the new Bond film trailer?” Ellie calls over her shoulder. “Oh, Daniel Craig, isn’t he _dreamy_?”

The door slams shut, and Ellie turns back to Daisy with a grin. “Sorry, Love. Too much fun to rile him up in the morning, he’s such a grump when he’s first up. Really all the time, come to think of it.” She puts down her own mug and reaches for Daisy, resting her hand on her wrist. “I know you just had a chat with your dad, and I don’t want to pry, but we’ve been worried about you. When the papers came out…”

“I know,” Daisy says. “I was angry, I didn’t mean to scare him.”

Ellie’s nervous smile gives Daisy a pang of guilt. She obviously did scare him. Very, very much. “He was so worried about you, Love. He was just sick before he had to get on the witness stand, he know you’d be hurt. He knew you’d be embarrassed, too, if all your classmates found out."

“It hasn’t been great,” she confessed. “But after the thing with my pictures…well, it’s not like things could really get all that much worse, could they?”

“Oh, Love,” Ellie murmurs, and Daisy is surprised to see tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. And your dad is sorry, too. I hope you know that. He’s so sorry for everything. He would have taken that secret to his grave, if he'd been able to.”

Daisy sighed. “He doesn’t really have much to be sorry for, does he? I’m mad at him for lying to me, but…my mum’s the one that cheated, in the end. And Dad…he’s dealt with a lot since mum cheated and it wasn’t his fault. She cheated and he got punished for it in a lot of ways. I don’t…I don’t want to be another person that punishes him for something _she_ did.”

Ellie’s eyes grow even more watery, and she squeezes Daisy’s hand. “Oh, Daisy. You are wise beyond your years, you know that? I know you’re angry, you’ve a right to be, but…he did have good intentions. He was trying to protect you and your mum.”

“He shouldn’t have. Protected her. She didn’t deserve it.”

“I don’t think your dad sees it that way. He loved her, and he loves you. In his eyes, deserving or not, that was enough to be worthy of protecting.”

It’s a bit strange, to hear someone talk about her dad like he’s a good man. She’s so used to hearing negative things about him, his personality, his faults. Whether it be his co-workers or the press or her mother. She isn't sure if Ellie is merely too smitten to actually see him for who he is, or if her quiet, often-distant father is far more compassionate and tender-hearted than she'd ever thought. Daisy thinks of him when she was younger, before the divorce. When he was home early enough to tuck her into bed, to read her a story, his lanky frame awkwardly stuffed into a child-sized bed as he lay beside her, letting her turn the pages. She's starting to believe it's the latter. 

“And your mum…just because she wasn’t a good wife to your dad doesn’t make her a horrible person. And it doesn’t make her a bad mum to you. You know that, don’t you?”

That one was far harder to swallow. After a moment, Daisy nods. "I guess so." 

Ellie pats her hand reassuringly. “I know this is a lot to take in and it’s going to be a while, but…are you okay, Daisy? Really okay, I mean?”

It’s been of one of the worst weeks of her life, undoubtedly, but she surprises both of them by smiling.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m okay. Or…getting there.”


End file.
